Put To Death...

              Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (Colossians 3:6-10)

 

            Yesterday, we considered the idea of resting in the unshakableness of God’s kingdom. As I think about being shaken, I tend to think more about bad things happening to me and things not working out as I wanted them to. Obviously, being shaken can also involve not being what I want to be. But how often do we think about sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed being ways in which we are shaken? How often would we list anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language as being shaken, or signs that we are being shaken?

            We might consider our anger a sign that we have been shaken. We could be angry because we are being shaken, we think. But everything on Paul’s lists of things we must put off interferes with our relationships with God, other people, the  universe, and ourselves. Each of them can, if given the chance, destabilize our lives. In other words, they shake us. God isn’t guiding Paul to say these things to make our lives more difficult, but less. 

               The best solution is to not permit the things around that will shake us. Ultimately, God is our rock, our unshakable foundation, but the less we subject our lives to shaking, the more stable we'll be.